


Enlightened

by eurodox59, squiggly_squid



Series: Idiosyncratic Assassin [7]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, I mean, Threatening, holy shit, jargon-heavy, lots of threatening, real hacking (none of that hollywood shit), that guy's scary as all get-out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:24:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8324221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurodox59/pseuds/eurodox59, https://archiveofourown.org/users/squiggly_squid/pseuds/squiggly_squid
Summary: Once he was a sec officer in a cushy bank position. Now that is over and done, Jim Ranier is the Infosec officer for Assassins Unveiled. Until the day he meets his maker.(featuring squiggly_squid's OC Turian)





	

Perhaps the most entertainment he could derive from being administrator would come from the denizens of the site. There was enough paranoia between the lot of them to match any of the better spymasters of history.

The administrator, whose chosen username had been picked from a rather old song, leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms until he felt the satisfying _pop_ of his joints. He then placed his meshed hands behind his head and stared off into space, as he often did, to think. A data pad rested just above his terminal, directly in his line of sight. He’d hung it up on the wall to memorialize his termination from his previous job. He’d had a good run of it, being sysadmin to the human branch of some volus banking corporation. Then he found a rabbit trail, leading him down to hell and out it’s backside, to here. A great sigh bubbled up from deep inside himself. It was a hard lesson to learn, being on the receiving end of the full might of a government intelligence agency. He couldn’t even tell which one. They’d used a very large bot network, judging by the way they were easily able to swap out EP addresses.

He sighed again. _A hard lesson, indeed_ . And all he had to show for it was his status as a newly registered sex offender. _Bye-bye, voting rights_.

When he found the job offer for the website in his inbox, it was only natural for him to be suspicious. It was the same day he lost his job, he’d not had time to submit papers, so many things just lined up perfectly… for what? Jim Ranier didn’t like not knowing, but he didn’t like the idea of losing his personal rig even more. So he ignored it, sending out his resume and receiving back some of the nicer _go to hell, asshole_ letters he’d received. Some of them he’d even hung up on his wall.

Another sigh.

With no other option, he took a look at the offer. The sheer volume of convenient benefits made everything sting all the more… but what else did he have? He accepted, of course.

The work hadn’t been unrewarding. Not at all. One of the first things he noticed was that he wasn’t alone. By his bots’ last count, there were at least 7 other admins. One of the chiefs among them had to be a salarian. No other organic would know tech that well. The rest? Jim figured that all the council races had to have some kind of representation. The salarian was a particular point of interest, however. In order to avoid detection, he’d put 3 degrees of separation between his botnet and the salarian’s. At first. When the salarian reacted, Jim did not know what was going on until some 60% of his network had been compromised. Of the remaining 40%, he’d saved about one-third. Some of it was still at work.

A lot of the work of identifying his coworkers was naturally investigative. Jim estimated that he could see about 10% of the salarian’s traffic, but he seemed to like to rifle through everyone’s systems. He’d come home one day to find all his ports closed, effectively cutting his ‘net access. There’d been a message on his terminal: _Well played._

Jim shook his head. _Only a salarian._

The only other interesting admin was probably an asari. The database admin’s account (master of all the user accounts and anything info-related going on behind the page, technically) dated back several centuries. She’d been accommodating enough when he’d asked about the backend. Then she’d surprised him with a blackmail attempt about getting access to some personal user-data. _That was a close one_. Otherwise, she’d set up a clean shop. Ran it pretty much the same.

No, the real fun was interacting with the users, he’d decided. He could change his username with a few words (and a doctored packet or two) to the asari. He had two primaries for screwing with people: ColdCase, the sad-sack intern from a bass-ackwards human colony, and UrNaturalStateIsEnlightenment. A hell of a mouthful for when he played the “stoner admin” stereotype. He’d tried TheFinalDescent, a despairing doomsayer, but there wasn’t much opportunity. Jiblets was almost strictly for when he needed a laugh. If someone makes a rule-breaking post, the text just gets replaced with [DELETED], not [ADMIN EDIT].

The user base was interesting, as well. Paranoid in the manner that conspiracy theorists usually are, they were rather open with each other on personal information. You’d think that tinfoilers would want to keep their info more secure, but not those fellas. Jim leaned forward, brought up one of the threads.

Striker, one of the human users, wondered what happened to the Atlanta thread and the one about the drell. Jim remembered investigating. The drell thread had a trail that got lost somewhere in the volus market systems. As to the other one, well…

One further thing about holding his job. While Jim didn’t _know_ that he received occasional marching orders from the **S** ol **S** ystems **A** lliance **I** ntelligence **O** ffice, the message was rather specific. Money didn’t hurt, either.

Deletions were open for any admin to see, but someone wanted the Atlanta thread gone. He’d dug up a very old and very dead name for the coverup: Wayback Machine. It was hardly active anymore. Jim had personally checked to see if it had the Atlanta thread saved. (It didn’t.)

To complete the masquerade, Jim decided that a special session was in order. Hence the latest thread: “DAMN THIS HEADER IS FANCY”. It was a true work of art, were Jim to be asked, with full-width characters and as many Unicode symbols as he could tack on to there while maintaining the aesthetic. He acted as though he were high as a kite, posting some bs about how many users had the same name above their posts. He’d briefly thought about adding in something about pictures to the left of their user pictures, but had dismissed that thought as a bit too much. Meta-forum? Naaaah. Especially not a mock meta-forum crewed by writers. They’d think him crazy rather than high.

So far the reactions were exactly what he’d hoped. A few _are you okay_ s mixed with relative indifference. One user, though, _N7Elite_ , seemed to suspect that he’d been hacked. Perhaps the best reaction, however, was _TellMeNow360_ on another thread. _That_ user suggested that Jim had gone on a sand trip and deleted the threads, proving the principle that it’s better to let other people make the lies for you than to do it yourself.

Finally, there remained at least one point of concern: user _ThisGuy800_ . Identified by his peers as a male turian, his physical device changed on an extremely regular basis. Jim discovered this when he’d set up _ThisGuy_ with additional, doctored packets asking his device for some hardware info. He didn’t get much, but it was enough to determine that _ThisGuy_ ’s physical device kept changing. Most users, such as the asari _Intel4Sale_ , were pretty open about their daily life. _Intel_ in particular was pretty open about where her rather intimate knowledge of wetwork came from. _ThisGuy_ , however, was a garden-variety troll. Which made his sudden coldness towards everyone highly suspicious.

Another thing, too, was that the _Jiblets_ account was set up with a false o-mail that redirected into Jim’s personal account. The package had been made by his botnet. Found to have more tracer trojans than the old YouTube website. Once scrubbed clean, he’d been presented with a _really_ schwanky piece of software. The sort of thing that governments hire hackers to make.

Jim grabbed the nearest data pad and began recording the facts. Normally, _suggestions_ came _down_ the pipeline, and Jim profited by following them (or suffered otherwise). Trying to _cautiously_ follow the trail back _up_ the pipeline lead him to a lonely server that was, for all intents and purposes, “abandoned”. He wasn’t willing to go any further, so he left a message:

_Possible suspect in recent killing. Investigate?_

Leaving all his findings with that file, all he could do was wait.

Well, maybe not _all_. Perhaps an official announcement would be in order. Some sort of communication with the users. Some-

His terminal pinged. A new message awaited him in his inbox. It was from the asari admin.

 _Well played._ His terminal pinged again. Same sender that gave the “suggestion” with regards to the Atlanta thread. Only, this time, there was no suggestion.

 _Asset ConRoy will proceed to investigate POSSIBLE HIERARCHY SUSPECT._ It came attached with the image of a dead _Torin_. Not much was known about him. Just an ID and some of the usual stats like name, d.o.b., the works. He was not previously marked as a person of interest, but whoever Jim’s handler was, they put in a lot of notes.

Also, Jim’s mind wandered as he read. _ConRoy? I assume_ I’m _ConRoy. But why that name?_ He briefly recalled that Conroy was an Irish name, some decades ago. He also remembered a documentary on medieval warfare and Robin Hood on the vid-screen where he distinctly remembered hearing “Con-roi”, with-king. Code names are tangential, but not directly related to the subject. The former to be memorable, the latter to be dissociated, if the spy ring is ever made. That gave him pause. He pushed the Irish connection away as irrelevant. Focused on the Con-roys. _What was it again? Knights would charge with the King on horseback. They likely thought of it by what they called it: charging “with the king”._ Jim decided that the capitalized R in his asset code-name was significant. _Names are meaningful, even if used to distract._

Jim put down the data pad. _Why ConRoy?_ Who _am I with?!_ Tangential, but not related. Tangential, _but not related_ . His heart took a plunge beneath his stomach. _There is no_ “king” _,_ he decided, _they’re sending me after him!_ He fought the urge to laugh. _THEY’RE SENDING ME AFTER HIM!_ His thoughts were interrupted by a voice.

“Whooooah, there, boyo. Calm down.” On a well-conditioned impulse, Jim slammed a key on his keyboard that shut _all_ wireless ports he could access. He was now technologically isolated. “You know, I should congratulate you. We were beginning to wonder whether you’d ever try and reach us. Good job on finding that server, by the way.” The voice was rough, gravelly. Accented. Canadian regional, if Jim recalled correctly. If they were on earth, Jim would place that voice somewhere along the former US-Canadian border, of what was now the UNAS. Their long ‘o’ sounds were fairly distinct. “We were wondering if you’d actually try and find us. Consider this your next test: find this fucker. Godspeed.” Both in his mind and in his room was naught but silence.

Fuck…

Wait...  perhaps he could… no. No, no, no, no no no no nonononononononon- FUUUCK. His heart a stampeding herd, Jim breathed heavily, his mind awash in panic. _If I so much as get_ close _, I’m as sure as_ made.

For several minutes, the combination of panic and shock induced in him a stillness that he could not achieve through meditation. And therein lay the key. For out of that darkness, out of the deathly stillness, a faint hope blossomed. It grew from a spark to the flame of an idea, then exploded. Excitement flooded his mind as the idea took it by storm. _Troll, but also sincere?_ He recalled a post where _ThisGuy_ had bemoaned the state of his fellows. _YouDon’tKnow has to be a liar. Has to be._ Neither was logged on, but YouDon’tKnow logged in from the Citadel often enough that he had to live there. _ThisGuy_ was on the Citadel at around the same time. A tremble began to spread through his limbs.

“Duh” he sputtered, wanting a datapad before his concentration on the need made the idea go away, “puh”. He leaped from his chair, a demon on the hunt. With abnormal speed, he picked up, glanced at and tossed aside several objects, breaking more than one, before finding an unused data pad. He first wrote _who is_ ThisGuy _?_ Then, he began to list all the assembled facts. _Assassin, disfigured, traits_ . Here he paused, trying to consider what sort of characteristics his quarry might possess. It wouldn’t do to get himself killed because he couldn’t figure out how to talk. _Meticulous, resourceful, well-connected_ . The last wasn’t an inherent trait, but the turian in the dossier died 7 years ago. If he’s still active, then he’s been an assassin, for, what? 15 years? And if the latest thread on the site was to be believed, the dead ma-perso- _Torin_ was blackwatch. _Not interesting my ass_ , he wrote. Jim had no idea what Ares was capable of, but he could take a wild guess. The forming plan would involve a meet, then… then… _then what?_ Jim put down the pad, panic returning in force. _Then what, you fool?! If you don’t out yourself right, you’re gonna wind up dead!_ His terminal pinged. It was Intel4Sale, replying to one of ColdCase’s comments. _What?!_ It didn’t make any sense, what Intel was saying. She was either stealth-calling him a dumbass, or she _seriously wouldn’t suspect_ that people would know about the public-private sector divide. Jim shook his head to clear it. _To the back burner, then_.

Jim noticed that he was still standing, the initial wave of inspiration having left him. He quickly sat down, face going warm with embarrassment for a moment, before returning to the data pad. Much more calm now, he closed out the file he had opened, saving it under a codename: “Mr. King”. He then created a new file, began to title it “Assassin meeting plan” before thinking better of it. He checked the ports with his terminal.

 _Yep_. The datapad, like every other piece of tech with an integrated circuit, was well and thoroughly connected to the extranet. With his terminal, he shut down all but one port, which he set to only permit outbound traffic. He nodded, satisfied that nothing could get in, before returning to the new file.

He created an outline for what he needed. Wrote it in terms of steps:

  1. __Get_ ThisGuy’s _attention__
  2. _Meet with him_
  3. _Survive_
  4. _Leave_



He had already expanded the first for a few items, but the rest were a mystery. Jim would need to control the meeting. That much was a given. It was either that, or die. He shivered from head to toe. Two feelings were certain in his mind: Jim was scared as fuck, but when he got scared, he got good. He was one of those fuckers who performed awesomely under pressure, and damn was he pressured right now.

 _The dossier._ Would he even want it? Jim could name one big thing: details. A dossier could mention people who squealed, which is something a ‘dead’ person would want to know. The AIO dossier contained _a lot_ of conjecture, but it was also based on squealers and forensics. The two pillars of police work, which was what “real spying” really was. It was enough. It was enough to hold on to, for Jim to stem the rising tide of panic. _It’s enough. It has to be._

As to the rest, getting from point A to the climax, the crux of the plan, would be simple. In his youth, Jim had been a practitioner of the “dark arts” of computing. An adept in what is more commonly referred to as a cracker, or a “hacker” in everyday speech. The turning point for him was discovering that he could get paid to do the same thing and call himself a “security consultant.” Now, however, he dug deep into those skills for the first time in decades to produce a very tiny virus. It was barely bigger than the message which it would deliver. Considering that most apps, especially browsers, weather apps and social media apps, communicate constantly with the extranet, it would be simplicity itself to slip it in amongst the normal traffic. As to the trigger… he could pull out some pretty schwanky wizardry, but he figured it would be enough to just get the virus on the _Torin_ ’s ‘tool.

Jim minimized the console he’d been working with. _Okay. It’s now or never._ He then opened up his admin consoles from the website, brought up the information being captured from _ThisGuy800_ , and looked for the EP.

 _It’s still Citadel. Good._ He once again minimized the admin consoles and brought up his earlier console. Entering commands to point it to the folder where his ‘setup’ resided, Jim ran the scripts that would send the virus on its way.

And when it triggered, the message would say: _Remember Jiblets? Here is your challenge: I am watched by the SSAIO. Track me down and tell me where we can meet._

There. It was done. It was done, it was done, there would be nothing Jim could do about it, until he was contacted. Now came… the _really_ hard part: waiting.

First came the regret. The instant of _I done fucked up_ where the panic quickly overwhelmed him. But there was nothing he could do besides go to his bed and curl up. He turned down the lights and tried to relax. _It’s already done,_ he kept repeating to himself. A mantra for safety and comfort. Over and over.

Perhaps me might eventually agree.

 

* * *

 

His hand was buzzing. No, really.

Why was his hand buzzing?

Though he had long since stopped taking a look, Jim brought up his hand, pinging his ‘tool back to life. He swiped away the message on screen, glanced briefly at the clock without actually seeing what time it was and got out of bed. He was groggy, he didn’t know what time it was, he didn’t know how long he’d slept. He walked to his kitchen in a zombie-like trance. Making a beeline for the coffee machine out of well-conditioned habit. He went through the motions to make his coffee, mind just then beginning to come online.

Jim pinged his omnitool again, prepared to actually look at his clock. It was a new galactic standard morning.

In a few minutes, the coffee was it’s usual too-hot self. He shambled over to his refrigerator, opened up his freezer and retrieved the ice tray. A few cubes later, the coffee was cooling down to a much more agreeable frosty temperature. Iced coffee was reputedly worse than hot coffee, but to Jim, it was all the same bitter taste.

While sipping his mug in another one of his well-conditioned impulses, he pinged his ‘tool again, remembering the swiping motion he made earlier and barely managed to set his mug down.

 _You need to work on your hide and seek game. Meet me at Chora's Den. Far booth right of the door._ Fuck. He’d already been found. He tried swiping the message away to dismiss it, but it stayed on the screen, mocking him. After a few attempts, Jim had to conclude that he’d been had. With a few gestures, he dumped the memory onto an OSD, plugged it into his terminal and fired up his debugger.

 _Well played, sirrah,_ he thought, looking over the memory dump, _well fucking played._ It was well that he only needed to restore the ‘tool from a backup made before the arrival of the message. Just track down the activity logs, open one up, then pick a backup based on that. His tool was clean in minutes.

 _Okay._ He heaved a heavy breath out of his lungs. _Okay_ . And again. Then he laughed. It was deep, coming from the depths of his belly. Full of volume and manic hysteria. _Okay. Game time._ But first, he need to go outside.

 

* * *

 

Getting a “replacement omnitool” was simple. Dumping the same program onto it was no more irregular than transferring data. One message, sent through more normal channels this time:

_Done. Look for the scruffy fellow in a long coat. I’ll make sure to use the word “philistine”._

After that, getting rid of the omnitool was as simple as destroying it. Getting to the Citadel would be far less simple. Or it should. His hand should not have buzzed him, should not have notified him of an old friend wanting a little chat. Hell, the timing was so convenient that Jim would consider himself in a short story, where the author would’ve been convinced they were pulling something amazing out of their ass.

In spite of all that, here he was. On the Citadel, with his friend having agreed to ensure he had a ride back home, should he need it. He made sure to skip his weekly shaving, to help his scruffiness. A longcoat, a windbreaker and a pair of denim jeans completed his getup, along with his hair, complete with a personal touch from his stylist: his bed.

With hunched shoulders and a shambling gait, he stumbled into Chora’s Den. The place was so seedy, it almost reminded him of home. He had to fight down the warm fluffy feelings of nostalgia before he could proceed. The time he spent doing that attracted a bouncer to him. A rather large Krogan. Jim quickly grabbed his prepared flask and took a deep draw from it, exaggerating the gesture a little by leaning back.

“What’re you doin’?” Jim kept going, putting his old skills to use once more. Eventually, the Krogan grabbed the flask out of his hand. “Gimme that!” he bellowed. _Perfect_ , Jim thought, _time for a show._

“Aaaay, wha’s yer problem? Can’ a man ‘ave a drink?” Jim exaggerated his every gesture to further the effect.

“This is a bar, wino,” the Krogan rumbled, “have a drink or get out.” He turned away and that would have been that, but Jim needed to make a scene. He didn’t think it’d be complete without a parting shot. After all, drunks can be pretty ballsy.

“Feckin’ philistine is what you are.” he muttered. It was as good a word as any to use, especially if he was drunk.

Jim looked around. _Huh. Nothing._ No one coming to meet him… why? _Because he doesn’t want attention, dipshit!_ Right. The answer to that was simple: retrace his steps. _Look at the door, then scan left._ Booth by booth, he scanned the patrons, looking for the turian of honor. Looking at the ‘far booth’, he could see no less than 3. One of them was the incredibly rare female turian. Never spotted outside one of their worlds, at least until today. She was unlikely, but users can lie about their bits on the extranet. The other was proud Hierarchy Military. The third wore a hood which obscured his features.

 _Oh_. Perhaps the drink was getting to him? It should not have taken that long to spot the guy that didn’t want to be spotted. Hoodie was with a dancer.

Jim fought down the panic he would have felt at meeting _a fucking assassin of 15 years!_ He did, until it simply vanished. _Yep. That’s the drink_. From there, moving to the individual in question was easy. Simple. A lark, even. One part of his mind marveled at the power of getting drunk. The other was busy trying to panic. He clutched one of his datapads, the one with the dossier, a little tighter as he shambled over. Watched Hoodie dismiss the dancer as he approached.

Hoodie, or “Sirus Vakarian” if the dossier was to be believed, motioned for him to take a seat. Jim did so. Hoodie remained silent. _Waiting for me?_ His answer was more silence, which soon grew awkward. _Okay then. Just remember, self: give away as little as possible. Think before you speak._

“ThisGuy800?” Confirmation. Never a truly bad thing. Nicely-

"You tell me." Two things took place simultaneously here, first and foremost, Jim was essentially blindsided as his thoughts were interrupted. Secondly, he noted in the back of his mind that the turian’s voice had a gravelly, bass note to it as the words rumbled into the air. Sirus himself never once looking at Jim.

“Right.” His own voice was small, reserved, almost raspy. Jim had lived a lifetime under the mantra _speak only when you have something to say_ . It’d served him well. One other note his mind made was to remind his conscious self about one of the basic assumptions involving going up against a professional: _always assume that they can read you like a book_. So what was he communicating? Tension, certainly. Not as much as before, but enough to sink him if he wasn’t careful. Also, uncertainty.

More silence.

“Shall I lead, then?” With words requiring a response, he could turn the tables and wait on Sirus.

"Why don't you start by telling me when AU administrators started making personal introductions with users?” _Purpose. He wants to know what we’re doing here_ . Sirus, Jim grew more certain that the turians were one and the same as he continued to observe his respondent, reached into the pocket of his jacket. Jim tensed, thinking that perhaps he might draw a weapon. Then the hand came back out and released a lighter and an old box of cigarettes. Sirus lit one then turned away. _Were you scarred, 7 years ago?_ Jim wondered.

“Perhaps…” Jim paused, fishing for the sentence that would _feel_ right. “Perhaps.... No, it started at the same time that we are as much as told by your friendly neighborhood spy that either you submit to them as your handler, or face economic ruin.”

“Ec-on-om-ic ruin, huh?” Sirus sounded the word out, one syllable at a time. He then took a sip at his glass, their current location leaving no doubt as to its contents, then took a drag on his cig. “I think the human saying is _my heart weeps for you_.” While the sentence began with a deadpan tone, the last bit carried a particular emphasis. Jim leaned forward.

“I’m going to be honest with you: I’m not good enough to play your game. I’m just barely smart enough to get my ass burned something good.” He paused, fishing for a response again. _Time to lay down the cards, I guess..._

“Then you shouldn't have searched me out." The truth stung a little, as it often did. This was also accompanied by a flick of ash off the cigarette. "What do you want? And make it quick."

“Simple: I want out. I want the AIO to go ‘poof’ and be gone. You remember the Atlanta thread, yes? I don’t want to be waiting for the next time the pipeline rings with another _suggestion_ . A suggestion like this.” He pulled the other pad out, the one with his _orders_ and passed it across the table.

Sirus took a moment to glance at the pad before barking a humorless, cutting laugh. "This man is dead." He tossed the datapad back across the table. "Tell your Alliance to check-” Jim put more strength than he felt into his response. _Now or never..._

“I’m afraid they have, Sirus-” The response was immediate. Sirus slammed his fist on the table top. Belted out a feral snarl, turned eyes which reflected the club lights’ red glare onto him.

“Sirus is dead,” he growled, his voice turned _deep_ , threatening. _Well, shit,_ Jim thought. “Unless you want to join him, I _suggest_ you forget him.” Jim took a deep breath. Lowered his head by no more than a degree, and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, partially obscuring the grin trying to force its way onto his mouth.

“Oh, I can, I can, to be certain,” he began, “but what of the little birdies? You know, the ones that _sang_ ?” What killed the grin was Jim remembering that Sirus _had_ connected all his screen handles to him. The dark smirk Sirus gave in response eviscerated the remains.

“I already see one before me. I wonder how well you can sing…” he dropped off, leaving the rest unsaid. _Shit_ . _Shitshitshit._ Jim stilled completely, knowing he was on thin ice. Outwardly, however, only the tension came through. His face did not change, save for the slight clenching of his jaw. “So why don’t you rethink the gravity of your situation and try again.” Jim scrambled for a moment before latching onto an idea: _Reframe the discussion_. An intake of breath, then:

“Alright, look. _You_ want me to forget Sirus, _I_ want me to forget Sirus, _I_ want _them_ to forget Sirus, so what’s _your_ issue with all this?” _Go for the face, but also:_ “I mean, I’m offering you a way out that doesn’t involve bloodshed.” _Shoot_.

“No. You asked for a way out.” The assassin took a drag on his cigarette. “You haven’t offered anything.” _Aaaaaand miss._ Jim found himself out of options, out of-

Wait…

The dossier! How could he forget that? But then his brain intervened again. _Threatening. Growling. Threatening. Growling. Why?_ Jim stilled, waiting for his mind to do its thing. _Wait… Perhaps he feels threatened?_ In it’s usual fashion, his brain, his mind, whatever he had that did his thinking thing for him, gave him a possible answer. He leaned forward, rubbing his forehead with his hands.

“Son of a bitch. Let me try that again: I’m asking for a way out of my circumstances. I’m asking ‘pretty please,” he reached into his coat, grabbing the dossier, “with some sugar on top?’” He slid the dossier over to the assassin and waited. Always as ever the master, Sirus blew Jim’s hopes out of the water with his response.

Firstly, Sirus didn’t bother picking it up or looking at it. He simply rumbled, coupled the noise with an amused mandible flick. "There are multiple ways to give you a 'way out', but I'll give you a bit of advice. Free of charge." He leaned forward to match Jim's posture. "You better have a way out when you come to try and threaten a man like me." Sliding the dossier back, he leaned back and took a sip of his drink. "My 'tool has already downloaded the data and sent it to the Hierarchy, so unless you can offer me something worth this interruption in my day." _Silence_ , the threat going unsaid. "So tell me, tech, what do you have to offer than isn't already on its way to the Hierarchy?" Jim breathed deeply.

“What if I told you how you got made, how to avoid a repetition? Is that worth me surviving this?” _Last. Chance._

“If you tell me it’s because I got too involved in AU posts, I just might shoot you here." On the surface, his voice carried a strong current of amusement, but underneath lay something else: _danger_ . Jim stilled once more. _What?_ The assassin took a long breath, blew it out, then spoke again. “So tell me something I don’t know.” Jim went a bit woozy for a moment, breathing out the tension. Then he gathered himself, steepled his fingers once more and spoke.

“Okay. That program you sent to Jiblets? Way too good for the job. Two kinds of people have the kind of skill necessary to make that program: super-geniuses and governments.” Jim stopped himself before he could say _too_ much about the program. “The program is what drew my attention, when I saw it was hardly customized for its purpose.” He cut himself off again. Swallowing down his tension, he skipped over the super-technical stuff and got to the point. “If you want to avoid suspicion, you’d need a much smaller program, built specifically to attack its target, the way most garden-variety hackers do it.”

And that was it. No more explanation, unless the assassin had a question. Jim waited, the fear of failure and impending doom weighing heavily around his head and neck.

“Noted.” Later, Jim would marvel at how easily a few tense moments could swing his state of mind from one extreme to the other. Now, however, the assassin smashed the cigarette in the bottom of his empty glass, waved to the waitress for another. “And this is where you give me ‘civilian’ programming.” _Fuck._ Jim knew it didn’t work like that. Not in the real world.

The assassin smirked. “That’s what most call ‘talking out of your ass’, Jim. You don’t know my intention of using the program.” He took the fresh drink from the waitress and sipped it. “But, seeing as how I now have you here in person, I will make you do the leg work for my contract.” Jim nodded, dumbly. The assassin stayed silent to let that last bit sink in, while leaning forward. “So tell me, what is your life worth to you?” Jim gulped, his throat suddenly dry.

“Quite a bit. What do you want brought down?” This was spoken rapidly, with a firmness that his voice hadn’t possessed before, when he’d been all whispers and rasping.

“I want the user information for AU. Specifically, the EP addresses of those with multiple accounts.” He hummed a little ditty as he ran a gloved talon over the rim of the glass.

In Jim’s mind, there was no question he’d do it. He wouldn’t even think of double-crossing the assassin before him. No, that’d be truly suicidal. His loyalty to the users ended where his own life began. The question was how? How would he get the data from the database servers, which were jealously guarded by the asari admin? How would— Once more, his brain intervened, laying out options before him.

 _Security audit._ Run a false phishing scam. Trick the asari into giving away her login credentials. There might then be the matter of tracing everything back to him…

 _A virus?_ One more virus, something to seize control of the system… _but no, there’s the salarian to consider_.

 _Combine the two?_ He’s already been sending doctored packets to the asari. He’s never once heard back about them. Could be the salarian admin, or could be that she bought it. _Or_ … the next possibility made him go cold.

 _A worm._ Far and away the most insidious variety of virus, a worm could deliver a payload into the system, perhaps a quine for another worm, or even the payload proper. Sort of like a multi-stage hack. It had been years since anything gave him this pins-and-needles feeling of excitement. He could feel the tantalizing challenge of hacking the site his way, how it took over his mind the way a slow-burning campfire might eventually grow into a wildfire. He kinda-sorta-maaaaaybe wanted to try it. Just _try_ it and nothing more…

“This is where you say yes or no, Jim.” The assassin’s voice was soft. No less deep, but still so very perfect. He might have been a hacker, under different circumstances.

Jim couldn’t help himself. This is exactly what he was doing before he became a security consultant. With wide eyes and a firm and unwavering voice, he spoke.

“OhGodyes.” The assassin waved him off.

“Then go. Come here when you have it.” He set his glass down. “Don’t leave me waiting or I might just have to come and find you.”

“I won’t.” Jim rose and left the premises, only now noticing the scents of sex, sweat and drugs. _It’s almost like home…_ He thought wistfully.

 

* * *

 

No matter where a body is, the Citadel Rapid Transit system can reach its destination inside of 10 minutes. Obviously, this requires a shuttle capable of rather extreme speeds in order to reach the more isolated locations of the wards. However, Jim found that the haptic interface was unsettlingly easy to inject code into. He set the shuttle to take him on a pleasure cruise, inventing a story for when C-SEC would respond. And they would, he had no doubt. For a malfunctioning shuttle, with no lives endangered, it’d take them 10 minutes to notice the software issue, then 5 more minutes (at the most) to remotely re-image the shuttle, replacing the faulty code with their standard suite. In the meantime, when the shuttle failed to materialize, Jim could have a space to sit and think.

Firstly, it only now occurred to him to ask a very important question: why him? Surely AIO had some inkling that he would do what he did. Of course, Jim didn’t expect it to end with him firmly under the turian’s thumb, but the hack he wanted could be done quite quickly, relative to the usual development schticks. He could have the virus in a usable state in 12 hours, could start designing the payload in around 8. He’d have to do a lot of optimization work for the assembled code, in order to get the response times he wanted. He’d also have to avoid using his admin account as much as possible. Couldn’t have the others tracing it back to him.

Was the dossier some kind of honeypot? Or was he some kind of suicide striker? His mind kept returning to that. Why would Jim, a techie with no considerable amount of true spy training, be sent against a _fucking assassin_? It didn’t make sense.

Anything he did would be for naught if they pulled the plug, so Jim would have to seize control of the local power nodes first. Fortunately for him, since every spacefaring society had implemented their own version of the internet of things, the power nodes in question would be accessible via the extranet. Pretty much everything was, really, which was unbelievably stupid in his eyes, but all the infosec world could really do about it was push for there to be firewalls for some of the smaller things. Jim had no idea if their power nodes were protected, but a port scanner would show their hand readily enough.

 _Fuck_. A port scanner was a very important piece of the puzzle. A specialized program built for determining what kind of operating system is running on the targeted machine, the utility of the information it could bring was such that it brought to mind sayings about knowing your enemy in order to defeat them.

And what would the turian do when he figured it out? Would there be consequences? Or did he disable any ‘traps’ before sending the information away?

 _Canary trap?_ Was the dossier filled with misinformation designed to cause the Hierarchy to show their hand? His mind didn’t want to let it go, despite the health benefits involved in not thinking about Sirus Vakarian.

Normally, it'd require weeks of research and design before he could start coding. He'd cut down on that by grabbing some existing code, turn it into the worm he needed. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to refactor than to try and build everything from scratch. He'd need a dev environment...

 _Oh, that was quick_ . 7 minutes and 30 seconds in, C-SEC had already seized control of the shuttle, he was almost at the CRT stand. _Looks like it's showtime_.

 

* * *

 

Jim had decided on setting up a temp shop in the Citadel proper. Sitting at a public bench, he definitely had his mind set on the lower wards, where C-SEC would be harder to find. A setup of any kind, however, would require money, and while Jim had plenty saved up, there was no way he'd want anything to be traced back to him. He’d need a fake ID and while he could spoof an id that would stand up to scanners, he’d need a backstory to stand up to anyone who actually _looked_ at the papers. _A nobody? An anonymous face that couldn’t be traced through the computers?_ It _could_ have worked, if he were 10 years younger and back home. Otherwise, he was badly out of date with street culture.

 _Is that a real problem, though?_ Perhaps he was making this too complicated. Perhaps he could just set himself up at a terminal, remote into his home rig, and pull his kit from there. He’d save a lot more time on setup, and as a bonus he could wipe whatever terminal he bought, perhaps even trash it after, to ensure that nobody could trace it back to him. Because that was the real issue here, getting away with the software equivalent of breaking and entering coupled with assault and battery. The worst part was that he couldn’t blame his elevated heart rate entirely on Sirus, or whatever he was calling himself these days. Even now, Jim knew he had a serious thrill-seeking problem. Whatever could provide him with intellectual stimulation was fair game, legal or no. He’d thought he was out of options, until _that one idea_ hit him not more than an hour ago.

 _Damn_. What made this hack particularly challenging was that he’d have to try and architect a solution to match the website’s backend structure. To build the kind of bomb that their tech would not stand up to, but also to get away with it, and he was starting with the disadvantage of knowing very little about his quarry. The port scanner would get him some badly needed information, yes, but it wouldn’t tell him about the network…

 _Unless…_ Omni-tools are backed up to external storage on a regular basis. Unmodified ‘tools can be backed up to a space provided by the manufacturer. _The moment I jailbreak it, or any terminal, however, all bets are off_. And it would have to be jailbroken. Civilian tech is normally loaded with manufacturer backdoors for the convenience of your friendly neighborhood race-state crime unit. Every race had one, just like their nation-state predecessors and any hacker willing to commit a crime has to remember to wipe their shit clean.

Jim leaned backward and shut his eyes. He was resting on a park bench, still on the Citadel. As with everything else, he wasn’t completely lost (network architechtures vary more in the details than in the big picture) and for the hacker who knew where to look and who has done their homework, any information can be useful. Anything, from reaction times, to monitoring comm traffic to and from a certain terminal to learn whether your virus was handled automatically, could be a factor. _I wonder if they sanitize their QL inputs?_

 

* * *

 

The room rented, even if only for a day, was, in a word, run-down. With faded wallpaper bearing dated patterns and blackened, creaky floors, Jim reminded himself that sometimes the best place to set up shop is a place that one might not expect a hacker to be. He’d brought with him a haptic terminal mount, installed it in the room with an OS drive for storage. He had yet to do the wiping, but if he didn’t want to spend weeks recreating his own tools, that’d mean grabbing everything from his admin terminal back home. Fortunately, he had a secure transfer process for exactly this sort of scenario, even if he was now the hacker instead of the infosec officer. One remote connection later, he had both tools and code to begin planning.

The first and most important part would be to gather information. He fitted a bot with a port scanner and set it to rake the site’s ports at a regular interval. The automated systems he had in place were a bit on the sensitive side, as the hardware in the back was older and easier to overwhelm than a lot of other sites. The firewalls were a custom design. Extra detection algorithms layered on top of an aging product kept their wall competitive with current skript-kiddies, and nabbing the definition databases from a public website for tracking current viruses kept the walls up to date with more serious hackers. All the extra fluff slowed down traffic significantly, making bottlenecks more dangerous, but the added security was worth it. It’d take a serious team to break down his setup. Or the man who did it all.

Almost as soon as programs could take user inputs, programmers discovered a grave need for sanity checks. A user who misspelled their username could cause a single-threaded program to come to a sudden and deadly halt.

Even today, however, not everybody makes these checks. One surefire way to check (and risk some serious jail time) would be to retrieve information. With this in mind, Jim started entering bad user data.

 _I am going to be pissed if this works._ Honestly, if any old hacker could easily get in with bad inputs, he didn’t know if he could stand to go into work tomorrow.

And lo and behold, the login page changed to show the retrieved user data. _That’s depressing._ As he scrolled down the page, Jim sighed. _Why the fuck do I even have a job?_ His answer came when the retrieved list ended near the beginning of names beginning with C. _Huh._

He spent the first 3 hours this way, trying a few basic hacks. Once he had the information he wanted, such as what action x does, how the system reacted if he did y, etc. he sent out a signal to his scanner bot: “carny-ride”. Upon receipt, the bot engaged in raking the ports, causing the firewall to shut all ports down in alarm. _Let’s see how quickly they react_. Meanwhile, he reached into the case he’d brought with him and began wiping a datapad.

The wiping took a few minutes only. He had tools for setting up datapads, omnitools, haptic terminals, just about anything he wanted to use, he had scripts for setting things up properly. With all external ports down, the site was essentially offline. Nobody could access it until someone could get in and manually give the all clear signal to the firewall. This would be the network admin’s job, or in the absence of such a position it’d fall to the server admin do it. After 10 minutes of designing his virus in broad strokes, he pinged the website to see if it was back up.

It wasn’t.

 _Do they not realize, or…_ He pinged them again, and got a response on the last packet. _Oh?_ He pinged them again. 3 in 4 packets lost. _DNS must be up_. Users could connect to the site, but only enough to get them a server error as a response.

He’d have to be careful going forward. At the very least, they’d know that something was wrong. If they felt pressed, they could easily stop him cold at this stage, so he did nothing but continue designing the virus, waiting for the next outage.

He didn’t have to wait long. The site went back down again in 15 minutes and stayed down for a good 4 hours.

 

* * *

 

When they next came back up, Jim was ready. With a prepared virus fresh from early-stage debugging, he fitted with a network scanner for a payload. It was the software equivalent of a flare, meant to light up the network and sent him more information. It would also be a proof of concept. The mere act of slipping the virus past his firewall would yield information about how the network operated. It would also yield data on how his fellow admins operated.

The plan was simple: set a bot to monitor their ports, watch for when the site came back up, and then inject the virus.

He signalled the scanner bot to fork itself. The new process he linked to the virus, giving the necessary information. Once everything was set, he picked up another datapad and began designing the final payload.

He worked for a mere 10 minutes before he got results. It was too easy. _The fuck are they doing over there?_ He was basically walking all over them. Did they send techs or spies to be admins? Were they even trying? What was going on? Jim was starting to remember why he went legit in the first place: too many companies are far too willing to give ground on security to make more money. It had gotten so much worse since website setups had gotten powerful enough to defeat anything less than a team of hackers, meaning that only criminals and spies had the capacity to do any serious hacking these days.

His virus pinged him again 10 seconds later. It would do that at a regular interval for 5 minutes, or until stopped cold. As he worked on the payload, Jim also started designing Sirus’ “civilian programming.” It would require a lot of research to cover every os and firewall combination out there, but he had all the confidence in his ability to get it done. Meanwhile, he took breaks to code the features that would transform his virus into a worm.

His virus stopped cold at 3 minutes, 20 seconds. Technically, it made the 190 second (3 minutes, 10 seconds) mark on time, but missed the 200 second mark, and then the 210 mark, then the 220 mark. He decided it was dead when the site came back up around the 230 mark. The scanner bot died about 30 minutes later. _So they figured it out and killed it._ By now, Jim had a pretty good idea as to how the admins would react. He adjusted his internal estimates for the assumption that they were fully alert now. Nevertheless, the payload wasn’t ready yet, so he did nothing against them.

The design process finished at the same time the scanner bot died. Coding took a mere hour, debugging another 2 hours. Both virus and payload were nearly ready.

For the “garden hacker” code, Jim decided on an extremely modular design. A framework to pull string for both breacher and payload, then plugins to fit slots for both. Most of his time went into programming breachers for specific combinations. Most of these were for server operating systems. He wouldn’t have time to code and test all combinations, not in 5 hours, but he would be able to get all the big ones, the ones that 70-90% of people would use. The task was simple, but the work tedious: recreate the same code 20 different ways, pulling as many tricks as he could in order to ensure uniform breaching ability. In the way of payloads, he built a few basic things to both demonstrate his system and accomplish common tasks.

 

* * *

 

At long last, the moment of truth arrived. Jim took a deep breath, then let it out, whispering “showtime.”

Another bot, another scanner. No bothering with information-seeking this time, just go straight for the ports.

The firewall tripped in 2 minutes. Not at all unusual.

Next, the first virus. An exploratory worm, the first stage of the invasion plan was to lay down some worms in preparation for the payload. The little fucker performed flawlessly.

Stage 2 involved securing any and all power supplies, ensuring they would not respond to shutdown signals. Again, smooth as fuck.

“What are you doing?” It was as though they were just rolling over for him…

Realization. A smile. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. They expected _him_ to deal with it. “Well, if they want a show, then I suppose I’ll have to oblige.” He logged in to his home terminal remotely. Secure, of course, in case anybody was listening in. No sense in letting your ass hang out. To all admins, he sent a message:  We’re being hacked! I need a rolling blackout on the servers, ASAP! Soon enough, the network lit up as though it was on fire, then the servers in back blacked out one row at a time. Playing both attacker and defender would change everything.

 

* * *

 

 

On top of the 12 hours spent developing the virus, retrieving the data required another 2 hours of action. Jim could have delivered in as little as 30 minutes, but playing both sides of the attack necessarily required him to draw it out quite a bit longer.

 

Okay, so maybe he could have delivered in an hour and a half, but again, better safe than hanging your naked ass out the window.

 

So, now Jim had a question. It was a rather important question, really. He was surprised (not really, given how much he likes challenge) that it didn’t occur to him earlier.

 

How would he contact the assassin again?

 

Jim had rushed out so quickly, that there had been no room to really try to arrange something…

 

“How much you want to bet that he put a tracer on me?” Next question, then: where would it go? Jim thought back to their meeting.

 

_ Let’s see. We weren’t really that close, I spent most of my time resting my chin on my hands… _ He checked the sleeves of his coat, in case the tracer was a bug. He didn’t bother with his shirt sleeves, as he’d worn a t-shirt under the coat.  _ Hmmm _ . Bugs hadn’t shrunk too much in the last 200 years. If he had been bugged… he couldn’t count on himself to see it. 

 

“Prob’ly some kinda assassin tricks for that…” he muttered.

 

After checking carefully, he had to conclude that there was no bug.  _ Omnitool? _ He had no way of checking. Not without the hardware he left at home. He pressed the heels of his hands together, tapping his fingertips in sequence. He didn’t trust the tool on its own…

 

He struck his forehead with his left palm.  _ D’oyyyyy. Use another omnitool, genius! _ That took another 30 minutes.

 

With the second omnitool, he loaded a bunch of monitoring programs and then plugged in the first. Using the second, he then shut all ports as a “scream test”, shut everything down, see what screams out first. Cataloging those took another 20 minutes.  _ I’d forgotten how time-intensive hacking can be _ .

 

Once every system and bloatware process was cataloged and set aside, a few things remained. Shutting those down while cross-referencing with the extranet, he finally hit upon something which didn’t return any usable results.  _ Gotcha. _ With his temporary terminal, he shut the connection to his home machine, and…  _ fuck! _ Then he realized that, with his carelessness, he’d probably have to re-image again. Probably have to pick up everything and move, as well.  _ And I just got fucking settled in, too! _ Oh well, despite this not being the best of his days, Jim looked to the positives: at least he’d had an enjoyable challenge.

 

Returning to his second omnitool, he put a monitor on the offending program’s comm traffic. While that ran, he used his terminal to being laying down a framework for what he wanted to do.

 

His monitor recorded every packet used by the tracer program, readily identifying the boilerplate data, such as type and size of the packet, but marking the bodies simply as “data”. While data analysis was not Jim’s forte, a tracer program didn’t have to do much. He was certain that at least some of the data contained encoded coordinates. Walking around his room, waving his omnitool about confirmed this.  _ Didn’t even bother to encode... _ The only other thing he needed was the EP address, and this was easily retrieved from the EP layer of the packets. Not long after, he finished coding. With his hastily constructed messenger app, he sent the greetings: “so, where do we meet?” The reply was swift in coming.

 

“Done already?” _ Incredulous? Why? _

 

“Took time getting my tools from home. Would’ve taken weeks otherwise.”  _ Just state the facts. _

 

“ And here I feared I wouldn't have time to get what I needed done." Jim snorted in response.

 

“I’ve even got your  _ civilian programming. _ ”

 

“In that case. Are you hungry?”  _ Why not? I mean, so long as he doesn’t kill me, of course. _

 

“Sure. Where am I headed?”

 

"There's a noodle shop a five minute walk from your location." Somehow, Jim wasn’t surprised that he was close by. A quick Toogle search dredged up the name.

 

“Raymond’s?”

 

“Yes.”  _ Well, here goes nothing. _

 

“Alright, be there in a bit.”

 

* * *

 

There was something wrong with the picture. Jim could spot it 4 minutes away from his destination. Perhaps it was the gauche, oversized aesthetic which rubbed the branding in your face every second you were there. Perhaps it was the fact that the logo featured a…  _ hispanic _ human, based on the dated, flagrantly racist depiction of what was obviously intended to be a Mestizo of Mexican descent, dancing, with noodles flying all over the place. Not exactly effective advertising to a human.

 

Walking up to the bar, Jim sat next to the only turian-shaped mass out of the handful of customers in the diner. Then spotted another in the back, also nondescript.  _ Is that a turian thing? _

 

“So, we ordering first?” The turian looked at him… like a turian.  _ God, I need to read up on my facial expressions _ . All he knew about those, with regards to aliens, amounted to the intensity with which one stared at prey down the barrel of a gun.  _ That _ one was pretty universal, if flavored according to the form of the face.

 

“Oh, by the spirits! Who are you?”  _ Oh, fuck. Wrong turian. _

 

“Uh, sorry sir! Just another ignorant racist going about his day!” He scurried away wearing a meek smile on his face and raising his hands in surrender. The offended turian harrumphed, muttering something about “stupid humans”, and sat back down.

 

Approaching the only other turian, the  _ correct  _ turian, this time, he could hear a low, rumbling chuckle echoing towards him. Sirus wore the same jacket, but a different face.  _ Makes sense, given his line of work _ . Orange clan markings and an utter lack of scars made him nigh unrecognizable.

 

Jim could feel his face heating up as he walked in shame towards his destination. Soon, as the chuckling continued, a smile sprouted on his face. By the time he reached the back, he was certain of two things: his face was very red, and he had a very large, toothy grin. He took a breath.

 

“Let’s try this again. Are we ordering, first?” He motioned towards the table, instructing him to sit.

 

“If you can manage not to panic in my presence for that long.” Jim ducked his head. 

 

“Ah, shit. It’s easier when…” They looked each other in the eyes for a moment, then “I’ll just sit down.” He’d had enough for one day, even if he could laugh at this last embarrassment. As he sat, Ares watched. He continued watching even as Jim looked over the menu. When the drone arrived to collect his order, he decided on a bowl of katsudon.  _ Just you watch, old feller. With your luck, this place’ll be run by a guy who does asian the way he answers a rotary phone: not at all. _

 

And then they sat. And waited. And then sat  _ and _ waited. After 5 minutes, Jim grew antsy. He could see the very slight spreading of one of the turian’s mandibles. It kinda looked like other turians did when they were about to force him through some kind of villainous monologue.  _ Those were the worst. At least they also tended to get themselves caught. _

 

When he could bear the awkwardness no longer, Jim spoke up. “Soooo, how’ve you been?”

 

“That would require me speaking of work.” Jim nodded, exaggerating the gesture by putting his whole neck into it. He took a breath.

 

“Right. So are we gonna talk around each other, or…”

 

“Or I can tell you the real reason behind your escapade.” Jim stilled almost entirely. He quickly corrected his posture, having sat down lazily, and leaned forward. With eyes wide open, he responded.

 

“That  _ would _ be interesting.”

 

“I believe it would be safe to say you will be up for a promotion in the near future.” He rumbled. On the side, Jim was starting to think of his voice as unusually low for a turian. He leaned an arm on the table, adopting a relaxed posture.  _ Heh.  _ _ relaxed _ _. _ “I’d be careful though. Your job seems to be quite dangerous.” Jim leaned back in his seat.

 

“Yep. Sounds like the story of my life.”  _ Pretty sure he already knows about the rap sheet. _

 

“I sure hope you weren’t friends with the asari coworker of yours.” Jim fought his laughter down to snorting. It was generally dangerous to show how warped his childhood made him, but on top of that, there wasn’t much love lost between him and the asari.

 

No, in spite of the new void in the pit of his chest, he couldn’t say that he was surprised that getting him out had  _ actually _ involved death. Only that there were too many possibilities to have decided  _ yes, that is what  _ will _ happen. _ Jim flicked his head sideways.

 

“Eh, not really.” The turian pulled out a cigarette.

 

“Good to know.” He lit it. “Still have that information on user names?” Jim pulled out a pair of OSDs and placed them on the table.

 

“Here’s your profile database.” He slid one over. “And here’s your  _ civilian programming. _ ” He extended his hand this time, instead of “throwing” it. “The whole collection’s pretty fat, but all you need to do is slide the modules into place to get it working.” That the assassin had put a tracer in his omnitool was plenty of reason for Jim to consider him familiar with tech.

 

The assassin hummed in thought, looking at the OSDs.  _ Examining them? _ After a period of silence, he destroyed them.

 

“Okay, so what am I  _ actually _ doing?”  _ And why the ruse? _ He didn’t ask.

 

“Getting out of my way, alerting me to SSAIO’s interest, and creating a distraction.” Jim was aware of the alerting thing, but…  _ ah.  _ He snapped his fingers, eyes wide with realization.

 

“If you wanted noise, there was a perfectly decrepit server in the ass-end of Shalta ward. It would’ve made a great distraction.”  _ I might’ve brought down the local power grid. _ He didn’t say,  _ again _ . After all, no need to say what can be discovered quickly, if necessary.

 

The turian blew out a long breath of smoke. “Where’s the fun in that?” Jim twitched visibly.

 

“B— b—” he lowered his voice from speaking level. “Bringing down an entire arm of the citadel.”

 

The turian shrugged and tapped some ash off. “Yes, but there’s nothing personal in that. So the power in a ward goes out?”  _ Dear Christ, it’d me  _ so _ much more than that. _ He waved his hand and took a long drag from his cig before blowing it out. “No. This way, I’ve made quite the  _ friend. _ ” He put an unsettlingly particular emphasis on the last word.  _ How many bets that I’m the guy? 8. 8 in 10.  _ Presently, their food arrived. Jim took a surprisingly good looking bowl of katsudon, while the assassin retrieved his…  _ something _ , which looked like pho, but with alien meats. He retrieved it, and set it before him, as Jim set his katsudon before him.

 

The assassin swallowed his food nearly whole.  _ That… actually makes sense. _ Turian teeth weren’t exactly mean for chewing. Still, it was a hell of a sight to watch the noodles slither down his throat. Jim tried hard to control his staring.

 

Of course the turian finished first. Jim was left far behind, eating his food while a turian bored holes into his very body with the intensity of his staring. It was rather uncomfortable, but Jim was beginning to imagine that he was on the butt of a joke, so rather than speed up, he kept eating at a measured pace.

 

Once his bowl had been taken away, Jim spoke up.

 

“I gotta know. Is it…  _ fun _ for you, trying to make me jump?”

 

“Yes.” Short, simple and to-the-point.  Jim huffed.  _ Not like I can do anything about it. _

 

“Okay, then.” The turian pulled out a credit chit and dropped it on the table.

 

“You understand what now happens for you, don’t you?”

 

“We never see each other again?” Jim did a much better job hiding his facial expression than he did hiding his inflection.

 

“For your sake, I’d say so.” He stood up, posture designed to enhance his height advantage over Jim. “In order for that to happen, it would be best that you pretend you never became the Alliance’s foot soldier.”  _ Don’t argue semantics, don’t argue semantics, don’t—  _ Jim nodded dumbly. Again exaggerating with the aid of his neck. “And stop that ridiculous nodding. You look like a pyjak.” He’d only ever seen a pyjak via the extranet, but here, saying so would be a difference without distinction, so he nodded, this time normally. After a period of silence, the assassin left without a further word.

 

_ Holy fuck. I’m alive. _


End file.
